Author explains that good communication skills require the following: an understanding of the audience and subtle interactions between writer and reader, organization skills, and certain basic communication skills. The task of writing a grant proposal in response to a specific set of instructions is used to illustrate the analysis and responses…

This discussion of information structures in written texts describes how linguistic analysis of short published reports leads to the presentation of an algorithm that depicts the problem-solving process in terms of a series of evaluative questions. (Author/CHC)

This paper considers students' attitudes toward research and writing about research and discusses methods used to help students overcome their largely negative attitudes toward research. The paper first states that at Illinois State University in Normal, the course that follows freshman composition is one on academic discourse. The paper reports…

Based on two national assessments of the writing proficiency of representative samples of students in grades 4, 8, and 11 conducted during the school years ending in 1984 and 1988, this report assesses the informative, persuasive, and imaginative writing performance of the nation's students and tracks changes in performance over time. The first…